WHY YOU SHOULD HAVE A GOOD PHOTO OF YOUR REALSELF ON YOUR AFFLIATE PAGE?

In my few years of online marketing I have learned that a good photo of you is VERY important in doing business online. What does your profile picture say to the world about you? That could determine the success or failure of your marketing efforts.

Since this is the online world where you don't get to meet and talk to people physically like in the offline it's VERY important that you place a good profile photo of you in your profile.

You've heard of the old cliché that a picture is worth a thousand words right! It is said pictures are more important than your text. Ouch! But that's very true.

Ever heard the saying- You never get a second chance to make a first impression! It’s very true online. It might be the very reason why many Personally Sponsored Affiliates (PSA) opt out many Sponsors' teams soon after recruitment. Some people just can't stand a 'BAD LOOKING' photo. I have observed many times some team leaders make effort to change and update their profile photos because they know better. So, your photo helps to;

Create Trust
Give a Personal Touch
Optimize your marketing efforts
Get's people to like you
Helps you stand out and create an engagement strategy
LinkedIn research shows that a page with a profile picture is seven times as likely to be viewed as a page without one. Like a house on sale you know, you will definitely investigate further when you see the picture.
Profile pictures are increasingly important in building your online business identity

WHAT MAKES A GOOD PHOTO?
A good photo is a REAL photo of you with an Open Honest Friendly face to accompany it. A smile would be very warm and inviting and I can testify about the importance of this alone. But if you can't smile then a smart green would sure go a long way to make someone feel welcome.

Think of these pictures as the modern-day version of the oil paintings that estate owners once commissioned. The smallest details in them will convey volumes.

Research has shown that to have a better impact it's best, to have your profile picture feature you alone, not your pet or significant other. "Being so strongly identified with your dog or your husband might not be appropriate unless you're a vet or a marriage counselor and that's part of your professional image." someone said!

The way you are dressed should reflect the norms of the profession that you're in or hope to join.

Even your own posture can speak volumes. "If you're sitting up straight for example, your shoulders are back, you're smiling and you have open eyes, you're non-verbally communicating that you're confident, competent and have a curiosity about the world.

While taking your photo try to be act as natural as possible. "Professional photographs can feel uptight sometimes "When someone you're comfortable with is taking your photo, you're exuding comfort, you're natural." Also, "people respond better to color photos, which have more life and energy" than black-and-white ones.

So in conclusion, generally a great photo is a picture that portrays you as pleasant and happy. Professional, especially with your affiliate business, is clear and not blurry, is current and lastly the right size recommended by the network for your business.

Drop your view on the comment section, its appreciated.

AFFILIATE OR PRODUCTS MARKETING CAMPAIGN

To put up a good marketing campaign for your business, here are few steps that I will suggest.

1) Know how your marketing campaign fits into your marketing plan.
Ideally, before you plan a marketing campaign, you have a marketing plan for your business. (If you don't, writing the Marketing Plan will lead you through the process.) The marketing plan is your master plan for marketing your small business. It provides the full picture of your marketing objectives and strategies for your target market in your products and/or services. The marketing campaign, on the other hand, is one small piece of your marketing plan, a marketing action designed to achieve a particular marketing objective. When you know how your marketing campaign fits into your overall marketing plan, you know who your target market is and how you might best communicate with them.

 

2) Set your marketing campaign objective and parameters.
What do you want your marketing campaign to achieve? That's the marketing campaign objective. You want to be as specific as possible. Not just, "I want more sales", but how many and of what product or service? You can think of parameters as the details of the objective. Time is the most common parameter that needs to be included as marketing campaigns lose their effectiveness over time. (Even Tony the Tiger had to be retired eventually.) So a common marketing campaign objective formula is: what will be achieved + how long will the marketing campaign run? For example: Sales of face beauty marks will increase 50% in three months.

3) Determine how you will measure success.
What metrics are you going to use? How will you tell if your marketing campaign has succeeded or not? Obviously, if I have a marketing campaign objective such as "Sales of face beauty marks will increase 50% in three months" the metric I'm going to use to measure the success of my marketing campaign is the number of sales made over the three month period. But the number of sales may not be an appropriate metric at all if my marketing objective is to increase the awareness of my brand or to improve my website's search engine page ranking. For tracking online marketing efforts, you can use Google Analytics. Methods of Tracking Offline Marketing Efforts by Laura Lake, About.com Marketing, explains some common ways to measure the success of your offline marketing campaign. Don't forget to establish or note a baseline for whatever metric you've chosen; you'll need it to measure your progress.

4) Set your marketing campaign budget.
How much money you have to spend on your marketing campaign will greatly affect the marketing strategies you choose so you need to set the marketing budget first. Obviously, a Superbowl TV ad is much more costly than an ad on local television or in a magazine. I advise you not to depend on free advertising and promotion strategies for your small business. In my opinion, this is one of the biggest mistakes small business owners make. This is not to say that all free marketing strategies are bad. But there is always a cost to marketing, even if the cost is only time, and your time may be much better spent. Always think first; is this the best/ most effective/ most convincing way to reach my customer? These ways usually cost money so resign yourself to spending money on your marketing campaign. You don't necessarily have to spend a lot, but you do need to spend some.

5) Choose your marketing strategies to communicate with the customers.
What communication channels are you going to use? Email? Direct mail? Pay-per-click online advertising? Note that some communications channels are going to be better suited to your target market than others. For instance, placing radio ads may be a complete waste of money if your target market doesn't regularly listen to the radio. Think about your target market's haunts and habits when you're choosing channels to reach them. Where do they spend their time? Where are they most likely to see or hear and pay attention to information about your products and/or services? In a magazine? On a bus bench? On their iPhone or Blackberry? So far I've explained how your marketing plan and your marketing campaign relate, how to set your marketing campaign objective, how you'll tell if your marketing campaign is a success, the importance of setting your marketing campaign budget, and selecting marketing channels and strategies suitable to your target market (see page one of this article). It's time for the "Just Do It" part of the marketing campaign.

6) Create a time line/action plan.
Write down what exactly you’re going to do and when in your marketing campaign. It doesn't have to be elaborate, but writing it down will greatly increase the chances that you follow through and give you records to use when you go to evaluate the success of your marketing campaign. For instance, suppose you are selling bicycle seats designed to be more comfortable than most. You might come up with a marketing campaign such as: “Find comfort on your bike”.  Now that's about as simple a marketing campaign as you can have. My point is, they can be simple. Simple is fine if it gets results. This is also a great example of a marketing campaign that it would be easy to jazz up. Suppose, for example, that there was a local person who was going to be in the bike race that was willing to wear a jersey with my business name and logo on it for the cost of a free bike seat. Suppose as well that she was willing to be the face of an online marketing campaign, whether free or for a price, and I could then set up a Facebook page and Twitter account about her training for the race (and, of course, promoting my bike seats). On race day, I could tweet about her progress. See how easy? And all for less than $2000. You could also get more promotion benefit out of your race sponsorship by advertising in more places, such as buying banner ads on bike-related websites, and/or ads in appropriate ezines and magazines.

7) Do it. Write your ad copy.
Firm up your dates. Place your ads. Search for and approach someone to be the face of your online
marketing campaign. Whatever actions your marketing campaign involves, execute; do; activate. Go back to your action plan timeline and check items off, writing in the date that you complete them. It will keep you organized and you'll love the feeling.

8) Measure your results.
When the marketing campaign is over, it's time to see how successful it was. Go back to your marketing objective, measure what you've chosen to measure to determine the marketing campaign's success and see how it's done. Suppose that my marketing objective for my bike seats marketing campaign was to increase my sales of bike seats 25% over four months. It would be a simple matter after the fact to compare my May, June, July, August and September sales figures and do the math.

9) Tweak and repeat as necessary.
Once you've measured the results of your marketing campaign, you'll be able to make decisions about the marketing strategies you've used and future marketing campaigns. Suppose that my bike seat marketing campaign increased bike seat sales 41%. I would call it wildly successful and decide to repeat it again next year. Assuming I had the tracking in place to know which marketing strategy produced which results, I could tweak my marketing campaign accordingly. If I had the data that showed that only
2% of my increased sales came from my Twitter and Facebook strategies, I may decide not to bother with that aspect of this marketing campaign next year. Or I might decide to repeat the whole marketing campaign as designed and see if the results for these two marketing strategies improve. Of course, my sales results for the months involved may show no improvement or even a decline, making this marketing campaign a bust. That happens sometimes, too. I might have to go back and do some serious revamping or even scrap the whole bike race sponsorship campaign. But if I've set up my marketing campaign properly and kept records of what I’ve been doing, at least I have data to make these kinds of marketing decisions. The Best Marketing Campaign In a way, any marketing campaign is better than none, because it means you're directing your small business marketing efforts rather than just casting blindly here and there. But the best marketing campaign is the marketing campaign that gets the results that you want, and that takes some planning and a coordinated effort.

Tips for Recruiting Super Affiliates

If you have an affiliate program, your highest priority is to recruit active affiliates and get them to promote your product or service. You may have already done everything you can think of to get the opportunity in front of people, but still... very little activity. And it's a great opportunity! So why aren't they biting?!

Did you know that just one or two super affiliates can out-perform the rest of your affiliates combined? As a super affiliate myself, I get a lot of requests to look at various affiliate programs. From that side of the coin, I'll share some tips for recruiting super affiliates successfully...

What is a Super Affiliate?

In any affiliate program, it's the top percent of affiliates that make the majority of the sales. These are the super affiliates. There is not a true industry definition, but super affiliates are those that are in the top earning tier and win affiliate contests. They are affiliates who know how to appeal to a market, how to add value to the sales process, and how to make sales. These are the affiliates you want involved with your affiliate program, promoting your product or service!

Creating Super Affiliates

New high performers appear on the affiliate leaderboards all the time, so don't limit yourself to known super affiliates. You may just discover the perfect affiliates for your program, and turn them into super affiliates yourself.   There have been merchants who took a chance on me in the past, and went out of their way to help me succeed with their program - well before I was known as a super affiliate (under this name, or certain pen names). Always give an affiliate the benefit of the doubt. You never know when or where you're going to find your next top affiliate!

Finding Super Affiliates

You've likely already done the ground work to get your affiliate program listed in affiliate program directories, joined and actively network on top affiliate forums, and created an optimized page for "niche/keyword affiliate program" (or multiple pages) so that affiliates can easily find you in a quick Google search. If not, those are your three top priority tasks. Two of which will require a small investment of your time upfront, and continue to pay off for years. Forum networking has major viral potential. Make friends in the affiliate world, and you'll get super-profitable referrals! You definitely want to make that a priority. Assuming you have all that taken care of, next you want to seek out ideal affiliates for your program and make personal contact. The most obviously place to look is on Google. Take the top keyword phrases in your niche and do a search on Google. Make a note of the paid advertisers, the bloggers, the websites, and the communities that show up in the top 20 results.

Check YouTube, and look for active affiliates or those with popular video channels in your niche. Search is going social, so you want fresh affiliates with video presence and/or social media skills going into 2010 and beyond. Next, check Twitter. Use http://search.twitter.com to perform searches on your keyword phrases, your product/site names, your competition, etc. Find the people who are already talking on your topic. Whether they are a "super affiliate" yet or not, they are reaching your target market. And they are likely interested in ways to monetize that conversation.

Recruiting Super Affiliates

First and foremost, you'll need a dedicated affiliate manager, or be prepared to give affiliates personal attention yourself. Super affiliates want a person they can talk to and work with directly. Someone who has the power to pull strings, make changes, and get things done. They usually have special requests. Before you can establish this type of mutually beneficial relationship with a super affiliate, you'll have to get their attention and get them on board with your program.

Most of the affiliate programs I actively promote are the direct result of personal contact by the merchant or affiliate manager. Even though I ignore more than 90% of the email requests I receive...

This is where most merchants struggle. Super affiliates are often super busy, and they are usually very selective about the merchants they work with and the products they promote. You have a very limited space in which to get your message either read or deleted. And if your message gets read, you want to make sure it elicits a response.

• Contact them where you find them, and while the conversation is hot if you can. If you find them on Twitter, enter the conversation there or send them a DM (direct message). If you find their blog, contact them through their contact form at the blog. If they offer a number, pick up the phone and call.

• Get to know them before you shoot off a message. Address them by name. Include something personal, such as their great article on XZY or their top ranking for ABC. (ditch the copy & paste canned emails!)

• You may not be able to appeal to them with dollar figures or conversion rates alone. Especially if they are community oriented. For example, with me a line like "I think your readers will love this" or "we'll give them an exclusive coupon code" works wonders Keep in mind that affiliates are marketers and they can read through big red headlines better than anyone else.

• Keep your messages short and simple. REALLY short and simple.

It seems like that needed more explanation. But really it didn't. Point made.

• Do NOT bombard them with follow-up messages or phone-calls. If you send an email, DM them on Twitter, comment on their blog and leave a voice mail - all within 24 hours - they will likely never work with you out of fear you'll harass customers they refer to you in the same way.

• Keep it targeted. You'd be surprised at the random requests I receive to promote products outside my niche. That's a waste of both their time and yours.

• Offer them something extra: 2nd tier, an exclusive interview, first dibs at a new viral report, a coupon code to share, higher commission rate, etc. Anything that gives them an angle and an edge.

You want to get the point across that you'll be available and that you are interested in working with them personally. That you'll take super good care of them - as well as any referrals they send your way.

p.s. Rosalind Gardner turned ME into a $uper Affiliate. Whether you are new to affiliate marketing, or looking to take it to the next level, you'll benefit from her Super Affiliate Handbook. That link will take you to her in-depth review of her latest version of SAH. It's updated often. Enjoy!